This conception of human reason as an altogether inadequate organ for getting at the truth of things he later expanded in his Oxford lecture, _Scepticism of the Instrument;_ and, still further expanded, it forms the first or metaphysical book of his _First and Last Things_. It is unnecessary to discuss the rights and wrongs of this primary point in a generation familiar with James and Bergson. It is an assumption of the purely personal, experimental nature of truth which has had a sufficient sanction of experience greatly to modify contemporary practice in ethics and sociology. And it should be noted that Wells evolved it in his own study of physical science (a study serious enough to result in text-books of Biology, Zoology, and Physiography) and that he presents it, in accordance with his own postulates, not as truth for everybody, but as his own personal contribution to the sum of experience. The study of science led him to see the limitations of the scientific attitude, outside the primary physical sciences which for practical purposes can afford to ignore individualities, in matters that approach the world of human motives and affairs. I do not propose to discuss this question of logic. It is quite plain at least, as Wells observes, in the spirit of Professor James, that "all the great and important beliefs by which life is guided and determined are less of the nature of fact than of artistic expression." And therefore he is justified in proceeding as follows: I make my beliefs as I want them. I do not attempt to go to fact for them. I make them thus and not thus exactly as an artist makes a picture so and not so.... That does not mean that I make them wantonly and regardless of fact.... The artistic method in this field of beliefs, as in the field of visual renderings, is one of great freedom and initiative and great poverty of test, that is all, but of no wantonness; the conditions of Tightness are none the less imperative because they are mysterious and indefinable. I adopt certain beliefs because I feel the need of them, because I feel an often quite unanalyzable Tightness in them, because the alternative of a chaotic life distresses me. And this is the way in which he presents the gist of his beliefs: I see myself in life as part of a great physical being that strains and I believe grows toward Beauty, and of a great mental being that strains and I believe grows towards knowledge and power. In this persuasion that I am a gatherer of experience, a mere tentacle that arranged thought beside thought for this Being of the Species, this Being that grows beautiful and powerful, in this persuasion I find the ruling idea of which I stand in need, the ruling idea that reconciles and adjudicates among my warring motives. In it I find both concentration of myself and escape from myself, in a word, I find _Salvation_.